Anti-vaxxers and ‘blackmail’ fuel polio comeback in Pakistan

Some two million Pakistani households have refused immunisations for children since April. An anti-vaccination movement rooted in suspicions of modern medicine. Unsubstantiated rumours fuelled by social media. Children infected with a disease that had been all but wiped out.

Polio is making a troubling comeback in Pakistan, and it is being driven by some of the same forces spreading measles in the United States. Two years after health officials declared they were on the verge of eradicating the crippling childhood disease from Pakistan, one of the last countries where it remains endemic, at least 58 children here have tested positive for the virus since January.That is nearly five times the total of all of last year, and the most in a calendar year since 2014 – a major setback for a US$1 billion-a-year global eradication campaign. Some two million Pakistani households have refused immunisations for children since April, when reports circulated on television channels, Facebook and Twitter that children had fallen ill after a vaccination drive at a school in the northern city of Peshawar.

None of those adverse reactions were serious enough to require hospitalisation, according to health officials.But the rumours revived long-standing myths about the dangers of vaccinations in Pakistan that the decades-long eradication effort has fought to dispel. Opponents of the Pakistani government are also using the vaccinations as a political tool to put pressure on the new Prime Minister Imran Khan. In dusty Bannu, centre of an impoverished northern district of more than 1 million people, some traders and small retailers recently threatened to boycott an upcoming round of vaccinations if authorities didn’t withdraw plans for a new sales tax.

“The new taxation system for retailers is like economic murder of our children,” said Saleem Rehman, president of a shopkeepers association. “The polio virus can disable a child and will not kill him, but our children will die of hunger if we surrender to the government’s new taxes.” Three-quarters of the new polio cases have been found in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and the adjacent tribal belt along the border with Afghanistan, the world’s last major corridor of polio transmission.Afghanistan has recorded 13 cases this year and is the only other country where the disease continues to infect children.Pakistani health officials have been baffled by the idea that parents would risk exposing their children to the virus to make a political statement.

“It’s a joke,” said a frustrated Aziz Memon, national chairman of the PolioPlus programme in Pakistan led by the charity Rotary International. “But these are just blackmailing tactics. The government is taking care of this in a serious way.” The resurgence of the virus has embarrassed Khan, who pledged to make polio eradication a “topmost priority” and launched a new communication strategy – backed by US$10 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – to combat misinformation. Memon said the government has replaced anti-polio officials in poor-performing districts and redoubled efforts to win over tribal and religious leaders, some of whom have denounced vaccinations as a Western plot to sterilise Muslims. At the request of Pakistani officials, Facebook said it deleted 36 posts for spreading vaccine misinformation “that had the potential to incite violence against health workers on the ground”.

In the next round of vaccinations, due to begin in November, officials have said they would distribute food rations in poor areas to rebuild public support. In Pakistan, the door-to-door campaign to inoculate all children younger than five has been hampered by insecurity and lack of government authority in certain areas. This year alone, five polio workers have been killed. Shah Wazir, president of the Bannu Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said his organisation would boycott the next vaccination drive, because previous demonstrations against Khan’s fiscal policies haven’t worked. “This was the only way to register protest against the government’s economic policies and seek the attention of the international community,” Shah Wazir, 60, said.

Other groups in the tribal area have also tried to condition their support for polio vaccinations on political demands. One tribe in South Waziristan announced it wanted the government to build roads to connect villages to schools. Another tribe in North Waziristan demanded compensation for houses damaged in Pakistani military operations against militants. Officials said they wouldn’t negotiate with such groups or administer vaccinations by force, relying instead on the information campaign and anti-poverty efforts.

“We hope that with these changes, things move in the right direction,” Memon said.

“We are heading into the low transmission season in November and December. If we are able to do a few good rounds of vaccinations, we will be able to halt the virus.” https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/south-asia/article/3026217/anti-vaxxers-and-blackmail-fuel-polio-comeback-pakistan